scholarly journals New general mixed-integer linear programming model for mobile workforce management

Author(s):  
András Éles ◽  
István Heckl ◽  
Heriberto Cabezas

AbstractA mathematical model is introduced to solve a mobile workforce management problem. In such a problem there are a number of tasks to be executed at different locations by various teams. For example, when an electricity utility company has to deal with planned system upgrades and damages caused by storms. The aim is to determine the schedule of the teams in such a way that the overall cost is minimal. The mobile workforce management problem involves scheduling. The following questions should be answered: when to perform a task, how to route vehicles—the vehicle routing problem—and the order the sites should be visited and by which teams. These problems are already complex in themselves. This paper proposes an integrated mathematical programming model formulation, which, by the assignment of its binary variables, can be easily included in heuristic algorithmic frameworks. In the problem specification, a wide range of parameters can be set. This includes absolute and expected time windows for tasks, packing and unpacking in case of team movement, resource utilization, relations between tasks such as precedence, mutual exclusion or parallel execution, and team-dependent travelling and execution times and costs. To make the model able to solve larger problems, an algorithmic framework is also implemented which can be used to find heuristic solutions in acceptable time. This latter solution method can be used as an alternative. Computational performance is examined through a series of test cases in which the most important factors are scaled.

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Jiajing Gao ◽  
Haolin Li ◽  
Jingwen Wu ◽  
Junyan Lyu ◽  
Zheyi Tan ◽  
...  

The increasing gap between medical waste production and disposal stresses the urgency of further development of urban medical waste recycling. This paper investigates an integrated optimisation problem in urban medical waste recycling network. It combines the vehicle routing problem of medical facilities with different requirements and the collection problem of clinics’ medical waste to the affiliated hospital. To solve this problem, a compact mixed-integer linear programming model is proposed, which takes account of the differentiated collection strategy and time windows. Since the medical waste recycling operates according to a two-day pattern, the periodic collection plan is also embedded in the model. Moreover, we develop a particle swarm optimisation (PSO) solution approach for problem-solving. Numerical experiments are also conducted to access the solution efficiency of the proposed algorithm, which can obtain a good solution in solving large-scale problem instances within a reasonable computation time. Based on the results, some managerial implications can be recommended for the third-party recycling company.


Author(s):  
Saeed Khanchehzarrin ◽  
Maral Shahmizad ◽  
Iraj Mahdavi ◽  
Nezam Mahdavi-Amiri ◽  
Peiman Ghasemi

A new mixed-integer nonlinear programming model is presented for the time-dependent vehicle routing problem with time windows and intelligent travel times. The aim is to minimize fixed and variable costs, with the assumption that the travel time between any two nodes depends on traffic conditions and is considered to be a function of vehicle departure time. Depending on working hours, the route between any two nodes has a unique traffic parameter. We consider each working day to be divided into several equal and large intervals, termed as a scenario. Here, allowing for long distances between some of the nodes, travel time may take more than one scenario, resulting in resetting the scenario at the start of each large interval. This repetition of scenarios has been used in modeling and calculating travel time. A tabu search optimization algorithm is devised for solving large problems. Also, after linearization, a number of random instances are generated and solved by the CPLEX solver of GAMS to assess the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm. Results indicate that the initial travel time is estimated appropriately and updated properly in accordance with to the repeating traffic conditions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 471-486 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karim EL Bouyahyiouy ◽  
Adil Bellabdaoui

This article has studied a full truckload transportation problem in the context of an empty return scenario, particularly an order selection and vehicle routing problem with full truckload, multiple depots and time windows (SFTMDVRPTW). The aim is to develop a solution where a set of truck routes serves a subset of selected transportation demands from a number of full truckload orders to maximize the total profit obtained from those orders. Each truck route is a chain of selected demands to serve, originating at a departure point and terminating at an arriving point of trucks in a way that respects the constraints of availability and time windows. It is not mandatory to serve all orders, and only the profitable ones are selected. In this study, we have formulated the SFTMDVRPTW as a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model. Finally, Computational results are conducted on a new data set that contains thirty randomly generated problem instances ranging from 16 to 30 orders using the CPLEX software. The findings prove that our model has provided good solutions in a reasonable time.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Haolin Li ◽  
Yi Hu ◽  
Junyan Lyu ◽  
Hao Quan ◽  
Xiang Xu ◽  
...  

This paper investigates a vehicle routing problem arising in the waste collection of the healthcare system with the concern of transportation risk. Three types of facilities abstracted from the health system are investigated in this paper, namely, facilities with collection points, facilities without collection points, and small facilities. Two-echelon collection mode is applied in which the waste generated by small facilities is first collected by collection points, and then transferred to the recycling centre. To solve this problem, we propose a mixed-integer linear programming model considering time windows and vehicle capacity, and we use particle swarm optimisation (PSO) algorithm for solving large-scale problems. Numerical experiments show the capability of the proposed algorithm. Sensitivity analysis is conducted to investigate the influence of facilities with collection points and the collection routes. This research can provide a decision support tool for the routing of waste collection in the healthcare system.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Lin Huang ◽  
Wenya Lv ◽  
Qian Sun ◽  
Chengle Ma

Workforce planning is an operation management problem in the delivery industry to improve service quality and reliability, and the working attitude and passion of drivers, as the direct implementors of delivery service, affect the service level. Consequently, assigning equal workload for drivers so as to improve drivers’ acceptance is a reasonable and efficient workforce plan for managers. This paper investigates a periodic driver routing problem to explore the relationship between workload differential among drivers and total workload; the objective of the optimization problem is to minimize the total workload. To tackle this problem, we first propose a mixed-integer linear programming model, which can be solved by an off-the-shelf mixed-integer linear programming solver, and use the local branching based method to solve larger instances of the problem. Numerical experiments are conducted to validate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed model and solution method, as well as the effect of small workload differential among drivers on the total workload.


2012 ◽  
Vol 482-484 ◽  
pp. 2322-2326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yong Ji Jia ◽  
Chang Jun Wang

In this paper, a useful variant of the vehicle routing problem, Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows and a limited number of vehicles (m-VRPTW) is given. The problem is to serve a number of customers at minimum cost by using a limited number of vehicles, without violating the time window constraint and the vehicle capacity constraint. The feasible solution of m-VRPTW may contain some unserved customers and third-party vehicles, such as taxies, are hired to serve these unserved customers. The mixed integer programming model of m-VRPTW is proposed and a two-phase algorithm based on insertion algorithm and tabu search algorithm is proposed to solve it. Experimental results show that our algorithm can yield effective and efficient solution and be capable of dealing with the m-VRPTW problems in real life conditions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (22) ◽  
pp. 10779
Author(s):  
Dan Wang ◽  
Hong Zhou

Driven by the new laws and regulations concerning the emission of greenhouse gases, it is becoming more and more popular for enterprises to adopt cleaner energy. This research proposes a novel two-echelon vehicle routing problem consisting of mixed vehicles considering battery swapping stations, which includes one depot, multiple satellites with unilateral time windows, and customers with given demands. The fossil fuel-based internal combustion vehicles are employed in the first echelon, while the electric vehicles are used in the second echelon. A mixed integer programming model for this proposed problem is established in which the total cost, including transportation cost, handling cost, fixed cost of two kinds of vehicles, and recharging cost, is minimized. Moreover, based on the variable neighborhood search, a metaheuristic procedure is developed to solve the problem. To validate its effectiveness, extensive numerical experiments are conducted over the randomly generated instances of different sizes. The computational results show that the proposed metaheuristic can produce a good logistics scheme with high efficiency.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (13) ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Fabián López

Key words: Genetic algorithms, logistics routing, metaheuristics, scheduling, time windowsAbstract. We consider a Pickup and Delivery Vehicle Routing Problem (PDP) commonly encountered in real-world logistics operations. The problem involves a set of practical complications that have received little attention in the vehicle routing literature. In this problem, there are multiple vehicle types available to cover a set of pickup and delivery requests, each of which has pickup time windows and delivery time windows. Transportation orders and vehicle types must satisfy a set of compatibility constraints that specify which orders cannot be covered by which vehicle types. In addition we include some dock servicecapacity constraints as is required on common real world operations. This problem requires to be attended on large scale instances (orders ≥ 500), (vehicles ≥ 150). As a generalization of the traveling salesman problem, clearly this problem is NP-hard. The exact algorithms are too slow for large scale instances. The PDP-TWDS is both a packing problem (assign order tovehicles), and a routing problem (find the best route for each vehicle). We propose to solve the problem in three stages. The first stage constructs initials solutions at aggregate level relaxing some constraints on the original problem. The other two stages imposes time windows and dock service constraints. Our results are favorable finding good quality solutions in relatively short computational times.Palabras claves. Algoritmos genéticos, logística de ruteo, metahurística, programación, ventana de horarioResumen. En la solución de problemas combinatorios, es importante evaluar el costobeneficio entre la obtención de soluciones de alta calidad en detrimento de los recursos computacionales requeridos. El problema planteado es para el ruteo de un vehículo con entrega y recolección de producto y con restricciones de ventana de horario. En la práctica, dicho problema requiere ser atendido con instancias de gran escala (nodos ≥100). Existe un fuerte porcentaje de ventanas de horario activas (≥90%) y con factores de amplitud ≥75%. El  problema es NP-hard y por tal motivo la aplicación de un método de solución exacta para resolverlo en la práctica, está limitado por el tiempo requerido para la actividad de ruteo. Se propone un algoritmo genético especializado, el cual ofrece soluciones de buena calidad (% de optimalidad aceptables) y en tiempos de ejecución computacional que hacen útil su aplicación en la práctica de la logística. Para comprobar la eficacia de la propuesta algorítmica se desarrolla un diseño experimental el cual hará uso de las soluciones óptimas obtenidas mediante un algoritmo de ramificación y corte sin límite de tiempo. Los resultados son favorables.


2014 ◽  
Vol 931-932 ◽  
pp. 578-582
Author(s):  
Sunarin Chanta ◽  
Ornurai Sangsawang

In this paper, we proposed an optimization model that addresses the evacuation routing problem for flood disaster when evacuees trying to move from affected areas to safe places using public transportation. A focus is on the situation of evacuating during high water level when special high vehicles are needed. The objective is to minimize the total traveled distance through evacuation periods where a limited number of vehicles is given. We formulated the problem as a mixed integer programming model based on the capacitated vehicle routing problem with multiple evcuation periods where demand changing by the time. The proposed model has been tested on a real-world case study affected by the severe flooding in Thailand, 2011.


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